6.2.3 ASSESSMENT 3 – MAJOR ASSIGNMENT You need to write an essay related to the development of an employee’s psychological contract. This essay is designed to widen your knowledge of this particular facet of the employer-employee relationship. Hence, you are required to widely research the concept of psychological contracts and write an essay that discusses the construct. Details of what is required within this assignment will be discussed in class. A psychological contract expresses the combination of beliefs and mutual understandings shared by an individual and an employer with regard to the expectations of one another in the workplace. It can be described as the set of reciprocal but not necessarily articulated expectations that exist between individual employees and their employers (Maunder, 1998). Although it is possible to examine a psychological contract in a “snapshot” in time, it is important to understand that is “organic” i.e. developmental and “living”. A snapshot taken in the first months of an employment relationship will be very different from one taken in the same relationship several years later. As defined by Schein: ‘The notion of a psychological contract implies that there is an unwritten set of expectations operating at all times between every member of an organization and the various managers and others in that organization.’ (Schein, 1965, p156) This statement has been further modified by Rousseau and Wade-Benzoni who stated that: ‘Psychological contracts refer to beliefs that individuals hold regarding promises made or implied, accepted and relied upon between themselves and another. Because psychological contracts represent how people interpret promises and commitments, both parties in the same employment relationship (employer and employee) can have different views regarding specific terms’ (Rousseau, Wade-Benzoni, p467) Psychological contracts differ from conventional employment contracts in that they may contain thousands of items; both parties may have different expectations, since some matters may have been explicitly discussed and others only inferred; and they change as the individual's and the organization's expectations change. As Spindler comments: ‘Every day we create relationships by means other than formal contracts... As individuals form relationships they necessarily bring their accumulated experiences and developed personalities with them. In ways unknown to them, what they expect from the relationship reflects the sum total of their conscious and unconscious learning to date.’ (Spindler, 1994, p328) The creation of a strong working psychological contract is dependant on the commitment and effectiveness of the employee within in the organisation. The extent to which their own expectations of what the organization will provide for them and what they owe the organisation in return must match the organisation’s expectations of what it will give and get in return (Schein, 1965).
Aamodt, M.G. (2010). Industrial / Organizational Psychology: An Applied Approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning
Sarantinos V. (2007). Flexibility in the workplace: What happens to commitment? Journal of Business and Public Affairs. Volume 1, Issue 2. Retrieved from http://www.scientificjournals.org/journals2007/articles/1159.pdf
Most leaders believed that employees in their organization disliked work and would avoid it if they could. Daniel McGregor in his 1960 groundbreaking book The Human Side of Enterprise argued that “Those running companies were operating from a faulty assumption about human behavior” (Pink, 2009, p. 74). Managers believe employees must be coerced, controlled, directed, and threaten with punishment to acquire them to put forth an effort to achieve set objectives. McGregor’s X-Y theory suggest that there are two ways to manage people.
The research in the field of IO psychology, provides aspects that attain to my interests. These aspects include; the study of management-employee relationship, work motivation to drive production, organizational culture, motivated leadership and its effectiveness, organizational development, training, ergonomics and the need of employee counseling. I have a passionate commitment to obtain the work of a psychologist, out of concern for the well-being of clients and the community at large. As a result of my professional volunteer experience, I now have a great deal of confidence in my abilities to plan and organize professionally, to set priorities, to meet deadlines and to handle simultaneous demands and conflicting priorities.
I often use Physiological contract with people for example with a friend I see as a good friend I am adhering to a mutual respect, equal effort to make time to meet up, trust, and for them to be there for me when I may need them. Psychological contracts serve to bind individuals and organisations together and fosters commitments.
Maslow’s theory cultivated as a “general theory of human motivation,” but this theory is “extensively” applied to organizational behavior (Miller, 2012: 40). In this theory, Maslow proposes that five types of basic needs motivate people: physiological, safety, affiliation, esteem, and self-actualization. These needs are arranged in a “hierarchy of prepotency,” where lower-level needs must be satisfied before achieving higher-level needs (Miller, 2012; 42). The lower-level needs are the first three basic needs in the hierarchy: physiological, safety, and affiliation. The first need is physiological. It refers to the needs of the human body, such as food, water, sleep and sensory pleasure. An organization fulfills these needs by providing a “living wage” that allows individuals to acquire these necessities and creating “physical work conditions that do not violate the physical requirements of the human body” (Miller, 2012: 41). From the physiological needs, humans move to the second basic need—safety. These needs include “the desire to be free from danger and environmental threats” (Miller, 2012: 41). Once again, an organization fulfills these needs by providing wages which allow employees the ability to acquire the necessary tools to ensure safety. In addition, the provision of physically adequate work conditions within an organization fulfills these safety needs. After physiological and safety needs are attained, humans aspire for belonging and love. This third basic need is affiliation. Affiliation needs refer to “the necessity of giving and receiving human affection and regard” (Miller, 2012: 41). This need highlights one of the key findings of the Hawthorne studies-the importance of social factors within an organization. The social relationships between coworkers and managers within an organization satisfies this need for
This essay will analyse the publication “Hawthorne, the myth of the docile worker, and class bias in psychology”, an article by Bramel and Friend (1981). It will subsequently go on to further critique six more academic articles that either support or disagree with the primary publication and demonstrate how the Hawthorne studies have influenced my perception on contemporary management functions and the employer-employee relationship.
... Vandenberghe, C. (2004). Employee commitment and motivation: A conceptual analysis and integrative model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(6), 991-1007. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.89.6.991
the inner conflict he feels as a result of worry about job security versus expectations of
Meyer, J. P., & Allen, N. J. (1997). Commitment in the workplace: Theory, research, and application. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Conte, J., Landy, F. (2010). Work in the 21 Century: An introduction to industrial and organizational psychology (3rd ed). USA: Wiley and Blackwell Publishings
...ance and by breaching the psychological contract and removing the incentives for work, we can expect an employee to feel unhappy and discouraged (Hutchinson, 2013). Both internal and external forces play a role in discretionary behaviour. Organisational injustice causes employees to similarly feel a sense of dissatisfaction and potentially rather damaging behaviours towards co-workers or the organisation itself. Finally, an unhappy worker can be subjected to external sources that cause a low level of happiness. Forces both inside and outside the professional that cause instability in both personal and professional lives of individuals. It is evident that the amalgamation of pseudo-psychological philosophy adds up to conclude that a dissatisfied worker is unable to display positive discretionary behaviour, but rather exhibit a harmful or counter-productive performance.
In order to achieve the desired attitude and behavioural changes among employees, it is essential to understand the objectives, expectations and goals of the organization and the employees (Mohyin, Dainty, & Carrillo, 2009). Failing in understanding what employees require and expect from the employment relationship will often lead to the deterioration in commitment and loyalty and thus increase employee turnover (Loosemore et al., 2003).
Sonnenberg, M.; Koene, B.; Paauwe, J. (2011) Balancing HRM: the psychological contract of employees - A multi-level study, Personnel Review, 40(6), 664-683
Individuals behave in a given manner based not on the way their external environment actually is but, rather, on what they see or believe it to be. An organization may spend millions of dollars to create a pleasant work environment for its employees. However, in spite of these expenditures, if an employee believes that his or her job that assigned to them is lousy and feel unsatisfactory, that employee will behave accordingly.